Kennesaw State’s College of Continuing and Professional Education is adding new courses to its web design and development certificate program over the span of the next year to provide students with more in-depth certificate options.
College of Continuing and Professional Education Technology Program Manager Rebecca Mattox said they will be adding three new courses to the program — a graphic web design course, a front-end web development course and a back-end development course.
According to Mattox, the college previously offered a web design and development certificate program that spanned around nine months. She said that the program will now cover topics in two separate courses — graphic web design and front-end web development — allowing instructors to expand on these topics and providing a more hands-on experience.
Mattox said that the courses are intended to serve as three separate certificate programs, such as the full-stack web developer certificate, earned by taking both the front-end and back-end web development courses.
“Full-stack means you’re a double-threat,” Mattox said. “You can do front-end and back-end, but if you add that other element of graphic web design into it, that means you can mess with Photoshop, Illustrator, create logos, really make your website a good user experience. So having all three would be more of a triple-threat if people wanted to do that.”
Mattox said courses will be kept up-to-date with changing technology and field advancement. She said students are taught and trained using programs that are currently being used by professionals in the field so that students are better prepared going into the web design and development field.
“This program is not for somebody who has never been on a computer,” said College of Continuing and Professional Education Interim Dean Tim Blumentritt. “It is enhancing skills or interests that already exist and then enabling them through education — through rigorous programs, just as rigorous as the programs on campus only in a different way — to follow their interests in a way that will help their careers.”
Students looking to earn all three certificates will be able to take all three courses in sequence. The graphic web design course will be made available to students in August and will last through January, with the front-end web development course being available in February through late August or early September. The first back-end web development course will begin soon after that in Fall 2019.
